Back to shopping.

Okaasan is back on form - she really is physically very strong.

Yesterday was warm and she went out and walked around all the shops under Sapporo Station, came home and ate dinner with us and chatted about stuff - so that's ok.

My fish in a mushroom sauce dinner was acceptable - but I over-did the miso in the miso soup - too salty even for Okaasan! She commented about it several times and watered it down a bit in her bowl...this kind of stuff used to make me stroppy - now I just let the comments sail past me...

I'm not a Japanese woman with generations of miso soup making in my genes and sometimes it will be wrong. If she wants to cook it herself then she'd get perfect. But since she doesn't cook she has to accept my offering...

Good news from England - my step-mum is back home again after her pneumonia bout. Her voice sounds so much stronger and she was chatty about one of the neices' babies, so all is ok there again.

And now - it is getting near the time that the whole of Japan will sit down in front of the TV to watch the Japanese women figure skaters try to get medals...I am so lucky it's my day off!!!! This afternoon I am taking a friend to have her 6-monthly cancer check up at hospital, but for now I have empty time: kittens playing with balls of paper all over the apartment and skating on TV....